When someone you love is experiencing mental health problems, anxiety, or depression, familiar surroundings may be more healing than a hospital environment. At times like these, United Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) has long been here to help with psychiatric and support services provided by registered nurses (RNs), social workers (MSWs), and occupational therapists (OTs) in your home throughout Fairfield and New Haven Counties.

Now United VNA provides an important new service:

Mental Health House Calls. The black bag is back! United VNA has developed a program that will give patients access, in their homes, to the kinds of psychiatric and mental health services that can only be provided by advanced practice nurses (APRNs) and physicians. These services include diagnostic examinations and tests, prescriptions, consultations, and on-going treatment. Mental Health House Calls are performed by psychiatric APRNs, in collaboration with a board certified psychiatrist.

With the addition of this new service, United's full range of mental health services now extends from comprehensive assessments, treatment planning, supportive counseling, medication management, crisis intervention, case management (coordinating care among all healthcare providers), home detoxification, and psychiatric rehabilitation, to educating patients and family caregivers about coping techniques, how to manage symptoms and behavior, and how to prevent relapses.

United's full range of mental health services can be helpful for patients making the transition from hospital to home, and may help prevent the need for hospitalization altogether.

For more information about United VNA's psychiatric services, call Brian Geyser, APRN,203-915-0542.